The Bible’s days are numbered!

Published: 5 August 2008(GMT+10)

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‘Only a small proportion of the students would profess a belief in Christ,’
the Religious Studies teacher at a large church-run high school warned me privately,
a few moments before I was due to address an assembly of hundreds of senior-grade
students re creation/evolution.

‘That’s not unusual at Christian schools,’ I replied, ‘but
what’s their knowledge of the Bible like? Even if they don’t believe
it, do they know what Genesis says?’

‘Oh yes,’ replied the Religion Studies teacher. ‘During this past
semester we’ve been working through the first eleven chapters of Genesis,
in preparation for your visit today.’

So, after the Religious Studies teacher had introduced me to the assembled students,
and welcomed me onto the stage, I began my presentation.

‘I’d like to start by testing your knowledge of the Creation account
in the Bible. I’m not asking if you believe it—that’s
a different matter—I’m just looking to get an idea of how well you know
what the Bible says about Creation. So, here’s a simple True/False
question.’

I then displayed a slide (on the huge screen in the assembly hall) with these words:

True or False? The Bible says:

For in eight days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, …

I said, ‘So, is that what the Bible says? True, or False? Hands up those who
say “True”.’

No-one put up their hand.

‘False?’ I asked, and every hand went up.

‘Okay then, how about this?’, I asked, displaying this slide:

True or False? The Bible says:

For in nine days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, …

Once again, every hand went up for ‘False’.

‘Well, how about this?’, I asked.

True or False? The Bible says:

For in ten days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is
in them, …

When every hand went up once again for ‘False’, I said, ‘Look,
how much longer do I need to go—am I heading in the right direction?’

‘NO’, they chorused.

‘Alright then, you win, we’ll go back the other way—how’s
this,’ I said with an air of resignation, displaying this slide:

True or False? The Bible says:

For in seven days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, …

‘Okay,’ I asked, ‘Who says “True”?’, and a sea
of hands went up.

‘And who says “False”?

Fewer than 10 students, mostly seated in the front rows in full view of the rest
of the assembly, raised their hands.

‘Oh! Do you see that?!’, I said, with an air of being shocked, looking
at the wider assembly but pointing directly at the students who’d indicated
‘False’ re seven-day creation. ‘How brazen is that?! And at a
Christian school, too!’

I flashed a quick smile at my targeted minority of ‘victims’, who all
had grins on their faces (as did the Religious Studies teacher), and by now many
students in the rest of the assembly were beginning to murmur to one another, because
(as the teacher later confirmed to me) the handful of students who’d answered
‘False’ to ‘7 days’ were well known as unashamed Bible-believers.
So, I suspect it was dawning on the rest of the assembly that they (i.e. the majority)
had given a wrong answer to ‘7 days’, and were puzzling over how this
could be.

‘Well, you know what?,’ I said, ‘These students who said “False”
are correct! Because the Bible actually says … ’ and I immediately
displayed this slide:

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is
in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

There was a loud exclamation from the assembly, followed by a roar of excited chatter
among themselves—it took nearly a minute for the hubbub to die down, before
I could proceed with the rest of the presentation.1

Apart from the obvious value of establishing rapport with the students at the start
of my address to them, the primary reason I go through this sequence of slides is
that it makes the crucial point that a straightforward reading of the Bible can
allow no conclusion other than it says that God made everything in 6 days. Not 7,
or 8, or 10 days, or longer. Not 10 weeks or months or years or millions or billions
of years. In six days.

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Thus there was no need for me to point out what they had learnt earlier in the semester,
i.e. that the Creation days in the Bible are numbered, and that they’re
numbered from one to six.2
There was no need for me to spell out that when the word ‘day’ appears
with a number it means (according to a straightforward reading of the text)
an ordinary day.

The students (whether believer or unbeliever) demonstrated by their answer telling
me that I was initially going in the wrong direction that they understood that when
the Bible says that the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the seas, and all that
is in them, in six days, it means in six days.

Recommended Resources

Many have been misled into thinking that the Genesis account of creation is not
actual history, but is just some sort of theological argument (‘polemic’).
This small book succinctly shows why those who believe in the inspiration of Scripture
have no intellectually honest choice but to take Genesis as straight-forward history,
just as Jesus did. It powerfully challenges one of the major problems in the church
today that affects the authority of the entire Bible. Read it, and give it to your
pastor or particularly anyone contemplating theological training—it could
save them from getting derailed by some of the misleading arguments common in theological
academia.

Further Reading

References

CMI speaker presentations demonstrate that there are straightforward
answers to the common objections and queries people have relating to the creation/evolution
issue, which are some of the most frequent objections to faith in Christ. For further
info, see under ‘Speaking and direct ministry’ on the
What we do page. Return to text.

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